Remastered Monsters’ may be too scary

Sunday

Dec 30, 2012 at 6:00 AM

Family Filmgoer

G — When “Monsters, Inc.” was released on Nov., 2, 2001, The Family Filmgoer recommended it for kids 6 and older and described the Pixar- animated comedy as “mighty funny,” full of “zingers straight from vaudeville and sitcom land” and “magical in its view of the world.” It’s still funny, but more for 7 and older in 3-D.

The film takes the whole idea of kids’ nighttime fears about monsters under their beds or in their closets and runs with it. In the movie, the monsters are real creatures with serpent hair or extra eyeballs. They can be lizard-like or giants with green and purple fur. They live in Monstropolis and work at Monsters, Inc.

Doors on an assembly line move through the factory and the monsters walk through them and into little kids’ bedroom closets to scare them. It’s a job. The monsters are bizarro looking, but mostly nice. And they’re actually taught to be scared of kids. So when a tiny toddler (voice of Mary Gibbs) winds up on the factory side of her closet, due to the evil machinations of a chameleon-like monster named Randall (Steve Buscemi), all the freaks at Monsters, Inc. freak out.

She finds her way into the care of a big furry turquoise and purple monster named Sulley (John Goodman) and his pal Mike (Billy Crystal), a green rubbery eyeball with feet. The movie ends with a nice message about cultivating laughter instead of fear in kids.

An Oscar-winning animated short by Pixar, “For the Birds” (G, 2000), precedes “Monsters, Inc. 3-D,” and is, if you’ll pardon, a hoot. A flock of small birds querulously settle onto a telephone wire and try to keep a big, gangly bird from joining them. He gets sweet comic revenge.

THE BOTTOM LINE: “Monsters, Inc.” was conceived as a comedy with lots of scary bits defused by laughter. It still is, but in 3-D, some of the monsters and the chase scenes — especially the climactic one where the heroes are dangling from the assembly line doors at a great height — will seem more intense to kids under 7, especially to very little ones. It’s just different when it looks like a bad-guy monster is in the room with you.

In this weak new live-action comedy, Crystal’s rat-a-tat shtick will more likely appeal to older adults and leave kids wondering what the fuss is about, especially when he rhapsodizes about a great moment in baseball, circa 1951. Still, for moms and dads the movie offers a fair critique of upper-middle-class helicopter parenting.

Artie (Crystal), a small-time sportscaster, has just lost his gig with the minor league Fresno Grizzlies. So he’s not in the mood when he and his wife Diane (Bette Midler) fly to Atlanta at the reluctant request of their daughter, Alice (Marisa Tomei), to baby-sit her and husband Phil’s (Tom Everett Scott) three kids for a week. Artie and Alice are estranged because she felt neglected by him as a child. Diane is determined she and Artie will bond with the grandkids this time.

Both grandparents quickly see that Alice’s idea of parenting, full of psychobabble and free of punishment, is very different from theirs. The oldest, Harper (Bailee Madison), stresses over a violin audition. Turner (Joshua Rush) turns inward because of his stutter. And Barker (Kyle Harrison Breitkopf) has an imaginary kangaroo friend.

THE BOTTOM LINE: Too many of the gags in “Parental Guidance” involve verbal, visual and aural toilet humor. The script also contains mild sexual innuendo and subtle homophobic humor. Grownups tell anecdotes about getting drunk. An adult character drinks wine. Billy Crystal’s character gets slammed in the crotch with a baseball bat and then projectile vomits onto the child perpetrator. Turner gets bullied at school and comes home with a black eye. We don’t see the fight.

“Les Miserables” PG-13 — The tragedy, suffering and grand emotions in this operatic tale of early 19th-century France (based on Victor Hugo’s classic novel) makes it perhaps too much movie for some middle-schoolers and definitely for preteens. The fact that even the dialogue is sung may also put them off. Many other teens, though, will be swept up by the epic grandiosity of director Tom Hooper’s film.

Those who have seen and loved the stage version may have issues with the way some of their favorite songs are sung. Star Hugh Jackman, for example, acts terrifically the role of the hero Jean Valjean, but he isn’t a high tenor. When he gets to “Bring Him Home,” usually sung in a melting falsetto on stage, he pushes his voice hard and it’s not pretty. Amanda Seyfried as Valjean’s grown-up adopted daughter Cosette warbles in a painfully tremulous soprano.

On the other hand, Russell Crowe as Javert, the obsessively righteous policeman who has pursued Jean Valjean for decades over a broken parole, surprises us with his husky and effective baritone. And Anne Hathaway as the doomed factory worker Fantine (Cosette’s mother) uses her lovely trained soprano to great effect in “I Dreamed a Dream.”

Sacha Baron Cohen and Helena Bonham Carter have good fun with “Master of the House” as the corrupt innkeeper Thenardier and his wife, who raised and abused little Cosette. Filled with Christian themes about forgiveness and love, “Les Miserables” recounts how Jean Valjean, released from a chain gang after serving almost 20 years for petty thievery, lets go of his bitterness, has a spiritual epiphany, and starts a new life, thereby breaking his parole.

He becomes an upstanding citizen. When Cosette falls in love with Marius (Eddie Redmayne), one of the students involved in a doomed 1832 Paris uprising, Jean Valjean vows he’ll protect Marius for her. And all the while, Javert is on his trail.

THE BOTTOM LINE: The strongest element that earns the PG-13 rating is the sense of squalor and suffering that the film evokes. The violent clashes between students and the army muskets are not graphic, but have a fierceness. Prostitutes in low-cut rags troll the streets in one chapter, and sing crass, suggestive lyrics about their work. Characters drink. A key character jumps off a bridge and we see his body hit.

Bradley Cooper plays the troubled Pat, a former Philadelphia school teacher whose mother (Jacki Weaver) picks him up from a state prison and psychiatric hospital as the film opens. He has served an eight-month sentence, and he’s under a restraining order to stay away from his estranged wife (Brea Bee).

Pat found her cheating with a colleague of his. An undiagnosed bipolar patient, he overreacted big time. Now under treatment, he’s still not in control of his illness, and his dad (Robert De Niro), a semi-retired bookmaker who places bets on the Eagles, worries that Pat has come home too soon.

Things change slowly for the better after Pat meets Tiffany (Jennifer Lawrence of the PG-13-rated “Hunger Games”). A widow, Tiffany confesses to Pat that she dealt with her grief psychotically and promiscuously. Their relationship starts on an argumentative, even harassing, note, yet Tiffany talks Pat into partnering her in a dance contest. Pat’s dad bets on them — not to win.

THE BOTTOM LINE: The “Silver Linings ...” script (based on the book by Holden author Matthew Quick) bristles with profanity and includes a rude hand gesture, and a scene in which strangers hurl ethnic slurs. The film shows brief toplessness and a strongly implied but nonexplicit shower sex scene. Tiffany and Pat discuss their many prescriptions. Some characters gamble and drink.

“Django Unchained” R — Absolutely not for anyone under 17, this bloody and profane new film by Quentin Tarantino nevertheless has much to say and much enjoyment, terrific performances and action sequences to offer adults with strong stomachs.

Tarantino has plundered the styles of lurid spaghetti westerns, kung-fu revenge fantasies, plain old Hollywood horse operas and nostalgic films about the Old South. The result is a tale about an unlikely duo who wage their own mini-war against slavery in 1850s America.

A German-born bounty hunter named Dr. King Schultz (Christoph Waltz) buys the freedom of the slave Django (Jamie Foxx) because Django can identify three wanted men Schultz is after. Schultz always kills the men he’s hunting and hauls their bodies to the nearest U.S. Marshal to collect his bounty.

Django tells Schultz that his beloved wife, Broomhilda (Kerry Washington), was sold to another plantation to punish him for some infraction. (Her name came from an owner who spoke German.) Schultz offers to help Django find Broomhilda, as long as Django teams up with him to help kill his list of wanted men along the way.

It is a bloody trail that includes battles with slave traders and a smug plantation owner named Big Daddy (Don Johnson). At another plantation called Candieland, owned by oily Calvin Candie (Leonardo DiCaprio), Django’s and Schultz’s goals come together.

THE BOTTOM LINE: Several scenes show slaves being whipped and one man set upon by dogs. Male slaves are forced to fight each other to the death for the entertainment of whites. This includes the sound of bones breaking. The ultra-violence includes explosive, deafening gun battles, great amounts of spattered blood, and bodies ripped open by bullets. The script includes frequent use of the N-word and other racial slurs. A horse is killed in a gunfight. There are strong intimations of rape, and we see a female character briefly naked. Characters smoke and drink.

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